I have an 86 2.8 Camaro that runs and drives but appears to have no AC components and it looks like it never had them. Though it does have an empty spot where it looks like something else with a pully was there. I also have a disassembled 1987 v8 Camaro. No motor or transmission but all the parts seem to be there.

Could I possibly take the AC parts and put them on the 86 and have good results?

How big of a project would this be? I know nothing of air conditioning.

 

Literally just finished converting my 88 non ac to ac. It's a lot easier than you would think but it's not a walk in the park either.

I have a 305 TBI though so it is different but the principles should be the same. You'll want everything such as compressor, condensor, evaporator, accumulator, both ac lines, probably have to switch blower motors too(I did on mine because it's slightly bigger on the ac ones). The duct work is also different. If you only have vents on the dash in the center above the radio, almost guarantee that it came as a non-ac camaro. If it has vents on the driver side and passenger side dash than it was either swapped in or it originally came with ac. As far as wiring goes, my car had 1 of the 2 wires wired to the computer already. The one I didn't have I believe was for the fan, so that when the ac was turned on, the fan would kick on. I just bypassed that for now and it's currently wired so that every time I turn the key on my fan is always going. The other wire I believe was for the low pressure switch. It was already in a wire loom under the hood in a plug for the accumulator, and tested it and it was hooked up and getting power so I basically didn't have to do much for that. The electrical work was mostly done by my buddy Bubbajones_ya so if I remember I will have him comment on here if I missed anything or to correct anything I might have messed up. Unfortunately I didn't take steps by step pictures. But start looking up the wiring diagrams for your car, and figure out what the ac wires are and where they run and see what you currently have in your car and what you will need.

Currently, my ac doesn't work because we put the washers on wrong on the back of the compressor so all of the refrigerant leaked out. Stupid, I know, but it won't be that bad to recharge it. We vacuum tested it before charging it and it held vacuum perfectly the first time we checked so that was pretty cool. I bought almost new everything for the ac though because I didn't want to redo any of this again. I pulled a line off a camaro from a junkyard but that was all I 're used for hardware.

 

I forgot to include some of the things I encountered while carrying out this task. These are things I found when doing my ac but might not necessarily be an issue for you, however I would look into everything still just to save you time and frustration.

The plug for the compressor I found to be almost impossible to find anywhere. Every time a junkyard in my area gets a 3rd gen camaro/firebird in the motor and transmission almost always get pulled immediately and usually they take everything attached to the motor as well. People on craigslist parting out 3rd gens in my area also don't have ac stuff because that's one of the first things to get snatched up(especially during the summer here in Phoenix). I ended up ordering my compressor pigtails on eBay for about $12.

There are 2 braces that attach to the back of the ac bracket on my car that I didn't have because I didn't have an ac compressor. Finding those was next to impossible. I had to order both of them on eBay as well and paid about $30 for both. I accidentally ordered one for the tpi camaro and it's slightly different. The V6 is a different compressor set up though so I don't even know what braces it uses to support the ac on that.

My camaro is an 88 TBI which is the first year they did TBI. I found out that the evaporator on an 88 TBI is different than the evaporator on an 89-92 TBI camaro, as well as the hardline that connects to it. I originally pulled the hardline from an 89 camaro at a junkyard and when I went to install everything I thought at first I was sent the wrong evap. But after much research and looking at camaros, I discovered that the evaporator and hardline are both different so I had to go find the right hardline, and got extremely lucky that the junkyard I go to frequently just happened to get an 88 camaro in a few days beforehand and it still had the hardline in it.

The box on the firewall is different. It holds the blower motor in and the evaporator. It's bigger for ac because it has to fit the evaporator in it. It sucks because it takes up so much room, but this is the price you pay for having ac.

I also had to redo the heater core hose set up. There's several different things you can do here, but the factory set up is so that when you have the ac setting on MAX ac, it uses vacuum to bypass the heater core. From factory it had a 3 way diverter valve with ac models. Mine didn't come with ac so I had a heater hose that went straight from the radiator to the heater core. I bought a 4 way diverter valve from a Ford explode and then connected all the new heater hoses to it. The other thing to address here is the intake fitting on the back of the intake manifold that supplies the vacuum for the diverted valve. Mine was just plugged since I didn't have any of the components, so I bought a grass fitting that might work. I recommend finding the right piece but it's pretty hard to find one. I have yet to get my hands on one. I also have yet to actually hook up the vacuum portion for all of this since I just finished getting the ac to work 2 weeks ago and have been busy with school stuff.

I may have forgotten some stuff but I'm hoping maybe this gets more traction than my post on here about converting ac. There isn't much out there on these that I have found so we just kind of wingged it which caused a lot of delays. I'm sure there are plenty of people on here that know way more than I do as well so hopefully they can add to this. This was the first time I have ever done a project like this and this was just my experience but hopefully it can be of some use to you.

 

Like ample was saying, it's definitely possible, but you will need to be very dedicated to get this swap done. It took us a couple of months to get all the necessary odds and ends to get the AC swapped in, because there may be some bracket bolt or vacuum line somewhere you won't realize you needed until you get to install your parts.

As some have said, it's easier to sell you car and buy one with AC, but based on the sentimental value/other work you may have done to yours, you can get the swap done. We put a lot of work into ample's car and it was a manual v8, which for quite a while, was very hard to come by here in AZ.


As for knowing nothing about AC, that will be another obstacle to overcome. If you plan on charging the AC yourself, you will need a way to pull vacuum on your empty system (Air compressor with vacuum pump or electrical vacuum pump), and you will also need an AC manifold gauge set for charging the system from a vacuum and monitoring the pressures.



As for taking the AC parts from the V8 and putting them on the V6, I believe not all of them will transfer. If I remember correctly from looking in junk yards, the v6 camaros have the AC compressor mounted in a different location then the V8 camaros. This means that one or all of the AC lines will be different from each other. I'm pretty sure your condesnor, compressor, and evaporator will be the same though.

The parts that you will absolutely need due to being different or essential when replacing AC parts are:

- Compressor line (that goes to the condensor and evaporator)
- Compressor brackets and mounting bolts(there should be extra brackets besides the main aluminum pulley bracket that mount to the engine/intake to prevent damage to the pain aluminum bracket)
- Orifice tube
- Accumulator
- AC oil (pag 100 if going with r134a)
- refridgerant
- AC o-ring kit
- Heat shrink/additional wiring for compressor clutch


Asides from those, it can be pretty risky using an old compressor and condensor if you don't know the condition of them because they can have residual debris that is very hard to flush out that will eventually destroy your new system.




I know it's starting to sound like a lot, and it really is. Like we said though, it is definitely possible, but you will need to be very dedicated to get it done.

 

Have you attempted to start converting it yet? Kind of curious to see another 3rd-gener do an AC swap. Pretty excited to have converted mine with my buddies help.

 

I haven't yet. I'm not sure I have the knowledge to pull off something like that.

 

How well do you know your wrenches? It's really not that hard. Most of the work is installing the ac components. All that will require is some time, and some tools, which none of the tools I had to use to install the ac components were anything out of the ordinary that I can remember. Also, you will want to know where everything goes. The evap, blower motor, accumulator/dryer, and condenser I'm pretty positive all mount in the exact same location regardless of year/engine. The compressor I believe was mounted on the passenger side in older V8 and all V6's. However, I think the compressor is different between V8 and V6 camaros.

If you don't know anything about electrical part, that might be tricky. I don't know a massive amount about electrical stuff, my buddy does, but there is some information on this site, as well as google where you can probably figure it out. As far as electrical stuff, I had to wire my fan to run at all times the car is running, since my car does't have the wiring for the fan in relation to the ac. It's supposed to kick the fan on anytime the ac compressor runs, so we just wired it up so whenever i start my car, my fan is running, so when I kick my ac on, it's already running. Eventually, I am going to install a toggle switch and wire it up to that so I can turn the fan on and off whenever I want inside the car. Otherwise, the other wiring for the switch on the assumulator was already there. We just tested to make sure it was getting power in the section we needed it to to plug in the switch on the accumulator. My car actually had the plug wired up that plugs into the accumulator despite not coming with ac, so I am not sure if that is something that GM did on all of them that didn't come with ac, or if somebody started to wire stuff up. I seriously doubt the guy who owned the car before me attempted to do it, because some of the stuff he did to this car was unintelligent to say the least, so I think it came like that from factory. Then, I had to buy the plug for the compressor off ebay since I couldn't find any in the junkyards, then wire it into the wiring under the hood by where the low pressure switch goes into the accumulator. That's all the electrical work that we had to do. The vents behind the dash are different, however, it is very easy to add in the ducts you will need to match the dash that was installed in camaros that came with ac. There is some blend door stuff that is different too, but it's pretty straight forward. There is a door that blocks the heater core I think on both ends of the heater core with models that came with ac. Also, the heater core related stuff I mentioned before isn't necessary, but if you want max ac to work, then you will have to tie in the vacuum diverter valve stuff, which is super easy.

All in all, if you are serious about doing it, me or my buddy can provide pictures of our engine bay, but keep in mind we both have 5.0 TBI's from 88-92. It definitely is intimidating, I know, I went through it. and I spend probably from when I bought the car in February, to last month when we finally finished it to do it, however I did most of the work in 2 or 3 weekends, but most of that was cross referencing parts and making sure I was installing something correctly.

Maybe if we keep this thread active, somebody with an 86 V6 camaro will reply. Or, you can post in the V6 section asking for pictures and wiring diagrams. I believe we used a diagram from austinthirdgen. I think it has the V6 diagrams as well.

 

My alternator is on the passenger side.

 

So it will be much different than my setup. But still not super hard, just a little time consuming. It all depends on how much you want to do something. I was pretty motivated to do it because not a whole lot of people do the conversions, for a number of reasons, but it is doable.